Draco Malfoy stared moodily into his enormous tropical aquarium. He had never been sure why he was so fond of tropical fish; on the surface, it didn't seem like a particularly Draco-ish sort of passion. He supposed it had something to do with those white peacocks of his father's: Lucius Malfoy kept birds, so his son kept fish. It was a subtle way of declaring his independence.
Draco laughed harshly at the thought. Independence? He had no independence from his father. Even now, when his father was mouldering in a cell in Azkaban and couldn't lift a wand to stop him from kissing every Mudblood at Hogwarts, he was still slavishly following the orders of his shark-faced master – not very effectively, maybe, but he was following them.
The truth was that, much as Draco hated to admit it, the fact that Lucius was his father meant something to him. It was the old Slytherin conviction: blood mattered. If a father had given his life to something, the son was honour-bound to do the same – even if that meant kowtowing like a house-elf before a withered old half-blood with delusions of grandeur.
If only his father had been someone else: an inventor of spells, maybe, or a champion Quidditch player, or even an Auror. Anything but the Dark Lord's sycophant that he was.
Right, sure, Draco thought sardonically. And as long as I'm dreaming, maybe these fish could do a few cartwheels for me.
A moment later, he nearly fainted with astonishment – for no sooner had he formed the thought than every fish in the aquarium froze in its place, curved its body so that its mouth was almost touching its tail, and began slowly rotating through the water in what was unmistakably an awkward attempt at an underwater somersault.
Draco gripped the sides of the table so hard that his knuckles turned white. Hang on, he thought, what's going on here?
You have commanded us, lord, said a voice in his head – a cool, unemotional voice, which somehow managed to combine the proud independence of a goblin with the uncomplicated readiness-to-please of a house-elf. We must obey your commands.
But I didn't mean it! Draco thought. It was a joke, for Ilmatar's sake!
Do you wish us to desist, then? said the voice.
Yes! thought Draco frantically. Yes! Desist!
Instantly, the fish stopped somersaulting and turned their faces toward Draco. To hear is to obey, said the voice. Long life to the king's majesty. And each fish lowered itself simultaneously in what might have been a respectful bow.
Draco really did faint, then.
When he came to, he was lying on the parlour sofa, and his mother was mopping his forehead with a cool cloth while the new house-elf stood by anxiously. "Oh, here we are, Noddy, here he comes," said Narcissa as she saw his eyelids flutter open. "Draco, darling, what happened?"
"The fish," Draco murmured. "They were turning cartwheels… they said I was their lord… they bowed…"
The cloth stopped moving across his forehead, and he felt his mother's hand stiffen. "Noddy," she said, in an altered tone of voice, "perhaps you would go into the kitchen and fetch me my wand?"
"Mistress's wand is not in the kitchen, Mistress," said the house-elf. "Mistress left it on the bedside table this morning…"
"Yes, I know," said Narcissa. "But I want you to look for it in the kitchen."
Noddy seemed excusably puzzled by this odd caprice, but the house-elf's highest law is his master's bidding, and he obediently scurried out of the room.
"You could have just told him to go away until you sent for him again," Draco murmured.
Narcissa didn't seem to notice the suggestion. "So soon…" she whispered. "Why did it have to be so soon? What have they been doing to the oceans, that you had to find out now?"
"Find out what?" said Draco.
Narcissa sighed. "That your mother is a shameless minx – or was seventeen years ago," she said. "You see, the summer before you were born, Lucius and I took a vacation to Biarritz. It was a difficult time in our marriage, and we rather avoided each other for most of the weekend: Lucius spent most of his time in the baths, and I spent most of mine sunbathing on the beach. Well, on the second day, a young man came up to me – a tall, golden-haired young man with grey eyes as deep as the sea, who had more of the carriage of a true pure-blood than any man I had ever met – a man who…" She swallowed deeply, and brushed a tear from her eye. "Forgive me, Draco," she whispered. "It isn't an easy thing for me to talk about."
Draco's heart was racing in his bosom. "You loved him, didn't you?" he said.
Narcissa nodded. "In every sense of the word," she said. "It was the happiest forty-eight hours of my life – and I was prepared, when I woke up on Monday morning, to leave Lucius and run away with him wherever he wanted to go. Only, when I went out to the beach, I found him sitting on the sand, gazing solemnly into the eyes of an enormous sea turtle. He sat motionless for some minutes, as though the turtle were giving him some important piece of information; then, when the turtle turned and clambered back into the sea, he rose and saw me standing there, and kissed me on the forehead and told me he had to leave. I said that I was prepared to go with him, and he smiled sadly and said that I couldn't do that – not because he didn't want me, but simply because I couldn't breathe underwater.
"It seemed that my weekend paramour had been none other than Prince Azaes, the heir apparent to the throne of Atlantis, and the turtle that I had seen him communing with had been a messenger informing him that his father had died, and that he was now the rightful Lord of the Sea. It was a duty that he could not shirk and could not share with me, and we would likely never see each other again – but he promised me, as he took me into his arms for one last embrace, that he would never forget the love we had shared, and he would never give his favours to any other woman, terrestrial or Atlantean. Then, almost as an afterthought, he added that, should I have a child as a result of our affair, that child would be the rightful heir to the Atlantean throne, and, on his death, would receive all the powers that went with that title: the ability to live underwater indefinitely, and the power to speak to and command the creatures of the deep."
She paused, and then added, "Nine months later, you were born."
For a few moments, Draco was literally incapable of speech; then, after a few deep breaths, he managed to say, "So Lucius Malfoy isn't my father, then?"
"No," said his mother. "You are the lone scion of the House of Atlas – and now, it would seem, the rightful king of Atlantis. I suppose that Azaes died defending the Cornish Mertribes against the Dark Lord's attack in October; that is, I suppose, one of the duties of a Lord of the Sea…"
"Then I've spent the last seventeen years believing that I was the last hope of the Malfoy name," said Draco, "when all the time I was really the bastard son of a fish-man." He laughed aloud. "In Ilmatar's name, Mother, why didn't you tell me sooner?"
He leaped up from the sofa, kissed a bewildered Narcissa on the cheek, and ran to the kitchen. "Noddy!" he called. "Forget Mother's wand, and come find me a map of the Floo network; I need to find the quickest route to the Atlantic coast!"
